The Detention Center
Butte County Jail
- Operated byButte County Sheriff's Office, Corrections Division
- County publishes a jail nameYes — Butte County Jail
- Jail address7 Gillick Way, Oroville, CA 95965
- Rated capacity614 beds; average daily population over 540
- Rated capacity611 beds
Source: Butte County — Corrections Division · checked 2026-08-23
Transparency rating
6/10Partial- ✓The jail is named
- ✗Who is in custody — not published
- ✓Beds and daily population
- ✓What it costs taxpayers
- ✓Deaths in custody
- ✗PREA audits — not published
- ✗Independent inspection — not published
- ✗Who else it holds, and for how much — not published
- ✓How to post bond
- ✓Phone, video and commissary rates
The Building
You paid for it. Here is what the record says it cost.
- Year builtNot found
- Original costNot found
- Paid for byExpansion funded primarily by a California SB 863 state grant, with a county match of at least 10 percent
- Beds614
Since then
- $44 million, 37,000-square-foot expansion adding more than 130 beds, opened January 2026 (ribbon-cutting January 16, 2026); includes intake center, housing units and a medical and mental health wing. Project ran more than a decade, delayed by the Oroville spillway incident and wildfires.
The Sheriff
Sheriff Kory L. Honea
- Title as publishedSheriff-Coroner
- Also serves asCounty Coroner
- CorroborationCounty Recommended Budget department summaries are headed 'Sheriff-Coroner Kory L. Honea'
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Butte County — Sheriff Kory L. Honea · checked 2026-08-23
The Judges
Judicial officers taken from the court's 2026 assignment order (BCSC 2026 AO 01, effective January 1, 2026). The order does not designate a specific arraignment or bail department.
Superior Court of California, County of Butte — Presiding Judge
- Jesus A. Rodriguez
Superior Court of California, County of Butte — Judges
- Jesus A. Rodriguez
- Michael R. Deems
- Virginia L. Gingery
- Kimberly Merrifield
- Kristen A. Lucena
- Philip H. Heithecker
- Ruby S. Neumann
- Clare Keithley
- Corie J. Caraway
- Tamara L. Mosbarger
- Stephen E. Benson
Superior Court of California, County of Butte — Commissioners
- Leah B. Sears
- Mark Emmons
- The county's bond schedule
- Share of the jail population held pretrial
- Median time from booking to first appearance
Source: the state judiciary · checked 2026-08-23
The County Commissioners
They pay for the jail. The sheriff runs it.
- What they controlThe detention budget, the building itself, and the agreements that let other agencies rent its beds.
- What they don'tDay-to-day operations. The sheriff is separately elected and answers to voters, not to the board.
- The boardBoard of County Commissioners →
- Where the jail money is decidedAgendas and minutes →
Notes on the record
- Butte is the strongest performer in this group on published operational detail: beds, average daily population, bail payment methods and deposit fees all appear on the Corrections Division page.
- Bail guidance is limited to accepted payment methods (cash, money order, cashier's check, licensed bail bondsman).
- Fees published are electronic deposit fees of $2.95-$10.95 and a $100 weekly commissary spending limit; phone calls are collect through IC Solutions with rates not listed.
- No public in-custody roster; the county offers VINE custody-status notification only.
- The PC 10008 page has shown a single 2023 death since it was created.
- Most buttecounty.net paths are disallowed by robots.txt, which limited what could be checked directly.
- Board of Supervisors elected by district (five districts).
What California law requires
Butte County posts a death-in-custody page.
Posts 7 of 7The page is here. A dedicated PC 10008 page publishes one death — Michael Sobrero, white male, 58, died 7/9/2023 at Butte County Jail (E-Pod), pronounced at Oroville Hospital, awaiting trial after being remanded 6/29/23, apparent suicide pending final determination — carrying all seven required elements. Only this one entry appears; no death has been added since 2023.
- ✓The agency with custodial responsibility
- ✓The county where the death occurred
- ✓The facility — and where inside it
- ✓Race, gender and age
- ✓The date of death
- ✓Custodial status — awaiting arraignment, awaiting trial, or incarcerated
- ✓Manner and means of death
California Penal Code § 10008, enacted by AB 2761 and in force since January 2023, requires the agency with custodial responsibility to post these seven items on its own website within ten days of a death in custody, and to update them within thirty days if the facts change. California is the only state in the country with this duty. Checked 2026-08-23. This records what is published, nothing more.
The record
11 people have died in the Butte County jail since 2016.
Deaths: Texas Justice Initiative, the cleaned copy of the Texas Attorney General’s custodial death reports — the state’s own public index carries no cause of death and has not been refreshed since August 2025. Population: Texas Commission on Jail Standards monthly report. Counted, not estimated.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Butte County and what it costs the people who live here. Nationally, almost 77% of the people who died in local jails in 2019 had not been convicted of anything, and suicide was the leading single cause of those deaths (Bureau of Justice Statistics, Mortality in Local Jails, 2000–2019).
How much is your sheriff — and your judge — costing you?
Your VOTE is POWERFUL.
The sheriff who runs this jail is elected. So are the commissioners who pay for it.
- Find your polling place and check your registration →
- Your county elections office →
- Register to vote in California →
The county elections office runs the polling place in Butte County and prints the ballot the sheriff’s name is on. Links from the California Secretary of State and vote.gov.
Names verified 2026-08-23 · dollars and outcomes still being gathered